2G* CELBAN Writing ~ Incident Report. Can you spot the errors?

This is a great incident report written for CELBAN Writing during the CELBANPrep Writing Level Two. It is well written, except for a few errors. Can you identify the errors?

Kim

On July 5, 2013 at 04:00 am Smita, a 6 year old child, was found on the floor in the bathroom nearby a wet pool of liquid on the floor in the medical unit. Many relatives were gathered to help her. She was crying and looking anxious. Using the Wong-Baker FACES Scale she chose the sad face with tears (ten on the scale where ten is the most pain). Her mother was standing beside her, she was also anxious and worried about her injury. She was fully conscious. Her mother said that she fell down when she was trying to enter in the bathroom because there was a pool of liquid on the floor of bathroom. She suffered from Diabetes Mellitus Type 1. She was transferred to the bed with the help of security guard and colleagues. She was assessed for hypoglycemia.Blood sugar was monitored. Vital signs were monitored. Temp 36.5 C, PR 110 bpm, RR 22 bpm, BP 100/70 mmHg. Head to toe assessment was done, there was a bump on her right side of the head, no bleeding or laceration on the other parts of the body. Tab Tylenol 250 mg PO stat given for pain. Doctor orders were carried out. Blood sugar was monitored, 4.2 mmol/dl. Documentation of vital signs, blood sugar and pain level were done. On duty doctor was informed.______________________

After 30 minutes she was assessed for pain. Pain was reduced to a smile on the Wong-Baker’s FACES Scale (Zero out of ten where ten is the most pain). Continuous monitoring of hypoglycemia was initiated. Incident report was sent to nursing supervisor. _____________________F. RN

Chizzy, I just had someone else ask me this question on Facebook. As far as I am concerned, when I was prepping nurses for the CELBAN with the old administrators there was no word count just a time limit. I have asked the question of the IENs that follow me on Facebook – and have taken the exam in the past 3 years – for an update. I will keep you posted.

I know these comments were from 2013, but I am reading them just now.
Just wondering if somebody could know the grammatical mistake?
If not, I am intrigued.

The problem a saw is that it is used a lot of SHEs and could be confusing.
For instance: Her mother was standing beside her, she was also anxious and worried about her injury. When it is mentioned HER INJURY it is not clear that is the daughter’s injury.

These are good comments, Georgina! You are correct. It is important when we use pronouns that we are clear about who we are referring to if there is more that one person who is of the same gender. There are some other items, can you find them? I posted this one in particular because there are some very common errors that many IENs made over the years. KK

Hello,
“She suffered from Diabetes Mellitus Type 1.” I think that this sentence implies that the patient is no longer suffering from Diabetes at time of writing the report which is unlikely because Type 1 diabetes is a lifetime disease unless the patient died before the report was written.

Rowan,
Great comment!
It is true, the present tense is to be used for specific instances in a medical report. This includes allergies and lifestyle choices.
However, to be clear, if the intent is to write about how someone has been cured of a disease, using the past tense is correct. Adding a time frame would help to make it very clear. For example, “She suffered from thyroid cancer two years ago, and remains in remission.” Adding a time line adds clarity.
Kim

‘ten is the most pain’
If ‘ the most’ is using as superlative degree, then I guess painful(adj) seems to be better like ‘ ten is the most painful score’.
I am not 100% sure though. Just sounds not natural to me.

Dear Jane,
Great comment. I really had to think about what you were saying.

While the phrasing appears to be awkward, it is a scale that is being described. When we describe a scale we nee to explain what the numbers mean: what does a 2 mean? what does a 7 mean? is that good or bad?

So, with the pain scale the most common wording is, “___ on a scale of ten, where one is the least pain and ten is the most pain.” In this case the most/least pain is relative. Other wording, if you prefer, is “the worst pain”.

The phrase, “most painful” is used in a different situation: when items are being ranked. I goggled this phrase and got: the most painful insect bites, the most painful youtube videos to watch, the most painful medical conditions. As such “most painful score” would be describing the score, rather than the degree of pain.

The reason it sounds unnatural is because “most painful [something]” is a common phrase. You have probably heard the pain scale phrasing less, in English, and mostly in medical or nursing contexts.

If you check out some of the other reports on Dear Kim, you will see this is quite a common phrase… and that is why you need CELBANPrep! So that the medical collocations and phrases become natural to you! 🙂

Have a great day, Jane. And thank you for your reply! The error remains unidentified! Now there is a challenge.

On her assignment, when I identified the error to the author, she wrote, “It is such a simple but dangerous mistake!”

Interesting comment, Gurdeep. You know, the assessors are teachers, like me, rather than nurses. If this were a nursing context rather than an English exam that may be the case. But the CELBAN is an English exam. So you bring up a very valuable point. As I am not a medical professional I can not comment on the monitoring. The error I found was grammatical. And I added it on the blog because it is common enough, but difficult to see unless you are paying attention to the grammar.
Thanks for your comment. Others will learn from you as a result.
Sincerely,
Kim

Dear Farzana,
I am pleased to have you comment! You have been learning a great deal! You are correct, and I missed both of those! (Actually it can be a colon or a comma with “After 30 minutes” being a dependent clause”.)

So now that you proved how good of a student you are, I encourage you to take another look. My hint is read without assumptions. It is your assumptions that allow you to read it as if it is correct, while missing the grammatical error; this is quite common and is the whole point of what I have been teaching you. Read with a critical eye. You have done so with the punctuation. Now with the words!
Kim